Thou
Umbilical
SACRED BONES
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Since forming in Baton Rouge in 2005, Thou have been churning out a steady stream of sludge to match the chaos of the world around them. In their nearly two decades together, they’ve perfected a mix of stark doom metal, punky political commentary, grunge allusions (including what is nearly a moonlighting gig as a Nirvana cover band), and an ethic grounded in the New Orleans DIY community—a concoction they often wield to challenge the world to change.
On 2010’s Summit, for instance, the band sought utopia, “the foundation for a brilliant new reality” with the track “Another World Is Inevitable.” Three years later, the title of an atmospheric instrumental from their Algiers comp declared simply “I Believe Because It Is Impossible” and, in one of the group’s many nods to Cobain et al, “Helen Hill Will Have Her Revenge on New Orleans” took their hometown’s post-Katrina political landscape to task. More recently, 2018’s uncharacteristically delicate Inconsolable EP found peace in chaos and hope in solitude, a stubborn dream of connection that persists in the face of epidemic loneliness.
On their new album Umbilical, Thou pay homage to their punk side with a litany of scorching, fast-paced tracks that continue this drive with a reflective edge. Umbilical is Thou’s first full-length non-collaborative release of all-original material since 2018’s Magus, a record that the new album is decidedly in conversation with. With shimmering songs that stretched out to 10 minutes and beyond, Magus reveled in ambiguity: the transcension of dualities, the veneration of the in-between. Umbilical, meanwhile, considers duality itself, craving clarion certainty while also considering the risks of abandoning nuance. “I am a rock within a sea of chaos,” Bryan Funck bellows over the churning guitars on lead single “I Feel Nothing When You Cry.” There’s a comfort in that, a conviction—but do we not lose a piece of ourselves by becoming so hardened and impervious?
That sense of loss is explored in the graveside visit of “I Return as Chained and Bound to You,” one of the longest songs on Umbilical. Landing toward the back half of the album, it opens on a powerful discordant note and an uncompromising wail, bemoaning the loss of a life that could have been. The track first laments being “scorned by those who gave up too soon,” but soon the criticism turns inward: “forsaken—I gave up too soon.” What emerges is a ghoulish cautionary tale that strives for empathy, acknowledging our terrifying need for each other and warning against our tendency to give up on the people around us.
The damning nature of that hopelessness is the central preoccupation of Umbilical, which thrives in gloom, but does so with the understanding that we have to trudge through it to find each other. In the liner notes, this theme is emphasized through epitaphs that accompany each track, cutting through the grotesquery with Easter-egg references to ’80s pop and British comedy that get to the heart of the commentary and continuously subvert easy categorization. “It’s so easy to laugh. It’s so easy to hate,” reads one, a quote from The Smiths’ “I Know It’s Over” that might read schmaltzy if it wasn’t so surprising. “It takes strength to be gentle and kind.”
